my homework

So I am just over a week away from finishing my Arabic class at Eton Institute, it was a special offer for Ramadan and I have to say, apart from being confused a lot of the time, I have really enjoyed learning some of the language as well as a great deal about the culture.



In fact my favourite favourite part is the writing, starting at the other side of the page and the back of the book makes it feel like I am writing with my left hand, which makes no sense at all really but that is how it feels, honestly.

Arabic, if you didn’t yet know, is more of a phonetic language and consists of characters as opposed to letters like we have in English. Then there are a whole lot of dots and dashes and swirls and hamzas that change the sound of the letter. Add to that the fact that, whilst you learn and write the vowels sounds in class they aren’t actually shown in normal everyday life, so that is extra challenging. But like any language it’s all about practise, practise, practise – and remembering a whole bunch of rules.

The picture above is some homework from today, and it says:

I have a brother, mother and father.
My brother lives in Spain and he does not work, he is an artist and his name is Andrew.

Only one mistake. Not bad don’t you think? 🙂

Oh and by the way I don’t for one second mean to imply that being an artist isn’t work of course, just that it’s not a formal job for the purpose of this little exercise.